Well, considering that there are probably more people here that aren't American than there are Americans, your statement is inaccurate. My code license is ~25 lines long and covers everything; the MPL or GPL are huge and written by lawyers all over the world.

I'll be tactful and not classify the folks I see like you have done.

If you want to do anything with game design or programing learn from the professionals that a game "bible" for your project is essential because everything is decided. There's no true disputation, questioning what goes where, or if something is really needed. The only question becomes "do we have the time/money to keep this feature?"

I work in the software industry as well, and we work with a web interface embedded in a custom server. Let me tell you that not having clear documentation and an understandable guide to our developmental path is killing us. But no one wants to admit it, and I'm just the contractor guy.

If you will make a serious game with a decent amount of content and programming to it and are working with others then you have no choice but to write a detailed design document. And detailed doesn't mean wordy or terse, it means detailed enough. I can imagine the action of a gun if you tell me it is lever action because I already know it, so leave out the worthless scrap and really describe things. Otherwise the team will flounder and you'll be lucky to get anything out the door at all.